


Clint's Very Own GI Joe

by mybrotherharry



Series: The GI Joe Verse [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Cannon appropriate violence, Clint's Origin Story, Dry Sex, Eating Disorders, Food Issues, Horrible people do horrible things to Clint, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mindfuck, Multi, Pain, Panic Attacks, Prostitution, Rape/Non-con Elements, Starvation, Underage Prostitution, Underage Rape/Non-con, Withholding food for sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4314813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybrotherharry/pseuds/mybrotherharry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing good ever happens to Clint on his birthday. Until he meets Phil Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clint's Very Own GI Joe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scifigrl47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifigrl47/gifts).



> Warnings: underage rape, underage non-consensual sex, underage violence, violence against a child, non-consensual sex, dryfucking, dangerous sexual practices, eating disorders, unhealthy relationship with food, starvation, hunger.
> 
> This is not a pleasant one, folks. I put Clint through hell before I make him okay. I don't even know where this came from. I blame Kepz, yes, you know who you are.
> 
> scifigrl47 is my favorite writer in the Avengers fandom. I hope she will accept this fic-gift.

6

On Clint's sixth birthday, Mom and Dad buy him a GI Joe action figure and Barney gives him an old basketball. Mommy says they are poor, but they still have love to share. Clint doesn't understand what love is, but he will share his portion with Barney if his brother lets him ride his bicycle.

Mom and Dad set the table for Clint and Barney's dinner of mashed potatoes and some smelly peas. They don't join the two boys because _"we already ate."_ It will be years before Clint understands what that means.

7

Clint is seven when he sees Daddy with Mrs. Howser from next door. He asks Barney about it. Barney gets a really sad look on his face, but he doesn't explain why Mrs. Howser wasn't wearing her blouse. Mommy says he is not allowed out without his coat and shoes on in the cold Iowa winter, but Mrs. Howser wasn't wearing anything at all. Clint wants to know how she keeps warm. He also saw his father shirtless, but his daddy is tough. The cold probably doesn't bother him.

Barney doesn't say anything. Clint wraps his GI Joe action figure in his red wool scarf, so that Joe is warm.

8

Red is Clint's favorite color until the Christmas before his eighth birthday. He is wrapping an empty shoe box with shiny red wrapping paper that he found in a dumpster outside the store. He thinks they should have presents, even if the presents are empty and they don't have a tree. Daddy says they can't "afffff-oaard" it this year, but they will get mountain bikes next year.

Frank from down the street has a mountain bike, and sometimes, Clint watches Frank's family sitting on their porch. Barney thinks Clint is eyeing the bike, but Clint spends every evening waiting with anticipation to see the snack the family is eating that night. Cookies and milk, corn on the cob, tea and biscuits, and once, tortilla shells with salsa. They had set up a barbecue station a week ago, and Clint's stomach had ached with hunger the whole night.

Clint loves the color red, until he sees red blots stain their pale grey carpet in the living room on Christmas morning. Mommy is standing holding the vegetable knife over daddy's limp form, and Clint forgets how to see other colors.

The only thing Clint takes from the house is his GI Joe, still wrapped in the scarf.

Miss Maria is their social worker. She takes Clint and Barney to a nice home in Idaho to live with Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. They have two daughters, Jane who is eleven and Lucy who is nine, who wear frilly frocks with ribbons in their hair. Their first night in the new home, Clint sees bread that is not burned and is astonished. He eats his weight in spaghetti before being sick all night, Barney wiping his brow and rubbing his back, as he is hunched over the toilet.

9

Clint is nine when he acquires the first scars on his backside.

Mrs. Roberts canes Clint for the first time after he breaks Lucy's piggy bank. It is a heavy ceramic pig with odd smelling paints and a ghastly nose. He was helping Lucy carry it from her trunk to the loose floorboard under her bed. It was heavier than it looked and Clint had dropped it on Lucy's foot.

Mrs. Roberts bends him over her knee and canes him for so long that his throat is hoarse from all the screaming. Barney holds him that night, as Clint sobs into his pillow, worn and exhausted.

They don't go to school. Barney says they need to get a message out to Miss Maria, but Clint doesn't understand what good it would do. Barney won't tell Clint what he does with Mr. Roberts in the big bedroom all night. If Barney is getting any extra food from Mr. Roberts, he wishes he would share. Clint's stomach keeps making loud noises. He wishes he could remember what peas tasted like, the ones he ate from his birthday two years ago.

Two weeks later, he and Barney see Mr. Roberts give a lot of money to Miss Maria wrapped in a brown paper bag. Barney stops trying to contact Miss Maria after that. Clint offers to share his GI Joe with Barney if it would make his brother smile again, but Barney only hugs Clint really tight and sobs.

10

Clint is ten when he learns that people will give him what he wants if he sucks their cock.

Mrs. Roberts wants to take Barney, Lucy and Jane to her mother's. Barney screams and locks the two of them in the hall closet, refusing to leave Clint alone with Mr. Roberts.

Clint wants to go Gramma Lily's. Lucy says Gramma Lily has seven cats and feeds all of them tuna fish. Clint doesn't know what tuna fish is, but he figures it must be cheap if Gramma Lily buys it for her cats. Mrs. Roberts is always saying how expensive food is, and how one must earn their food. Clint is useless to the Roberts, so he doesn't get the same food Lucy and Jane do. Barney gets biscuits and chicken soup and leftover lasagna sometimes, after he has slept in Mr. Robert's study. At those times, Barney always sneaks most of the food to Clint. Clint tries not to think about that, because thinking about food makes his stomach hurt.

Mr. Roberts finally breaks the door down and gives Barney a tall glass of milk. Clint's mouth waters just looking at it, but he doesn't get any. Mr. Roberts promises to let him eat pizza if he behaves himself until the rest of the family comes back from Gramma Lily's. Barney falls asleep after drinking the milk. Mrs. Roberts wraps him in a blanket, puts him in the backseat and drives away. It is the last time Clint sees Barney.

When the house is quiet in the night, Mr. Roberts takes Clint to his study and makes him open his mouth. He teaches Clint to breathe through his nose, to not gag and swallow at the right places. Clint wants to cry but he doesn't know why he feels sad, especially since Mr. Roberts is being more nice to him than he has been in all the time they have lived together. When he finally is given the promised slice of pizza, he eats it so fast that he throws up all over the dining table.

Mr. Roberts whips him with the antique riding crop and makes him clean up the mess, worsened by streaks of Clint's blood mixing with the sick.

11

Clint learns new names at age eleven. He learns _slut, bitch, whore, cunt, pussy_. He learns _fag and dick_. Mr. Roberts loves to call him all these names, but he is not allowed to say the words himself outside of the study, because it would make God angry.

Clint learns that the Roberts are very nervous about him being seen by anybody. The house is in the middle of a farm, with the next household a mile away. Clint is not allowed to leave the house, and the girls aren't allowed to talk about him to their friends at school. Once Lucy mentioned that she told her best friend Lalia about how stupid Clint was. Clint had gotten whipped for that one, even though he had not broken any rules.

He learns to use it to his advantage, but it takes him a long time. He has always been stupid, Barney would have gotten them both out by now. After three years, Clint has understood that he needs to leave the Roberts. He is too stupid to know how.

He cries and screams and clamps his mouth as tight as it would go, refusing to let Mr. Roberts fuck his mouth until he gets some food. He learns to hoard, he learns to keep secrets - he smuggles cookies from Jane's cookie jar and apples from the pantry and hides them in a tiny cavern-like space between the roof and the attic. He stashes whatever food he can find. He learns to save for a rainy day.

He learns to climb surfaces - edges of doors, curtains, windows, even walls. He learns to gain purchase, to climb and seek high ground. Adults don't look up while drunkenly searching for children. He secretes away GI Joe into a hole in the trunk of a tree in the backyard, scared for his safety. He doesn't want Joe to be broken anymore than Clint himself is.

He scouts the dishes in the sink for leftovers and roots through the trashcans to salvage anything the Roberts have thrown away. He comes across the battered Robin Hood story book at the bottom of Jane's trash. He can't read or write, but he loves the pictures of the tall man with a bow. He thinks the bow is even cooler than the gun his GI Joe is holding.

12

Mr. Roberts tells Clint he loves him. Clint does not understand that word even though everyone keeps saying it. Lucy has dolls that are married every day because they have love for each other. He remembers his mother insisting that they still shared love even if they had no money. Clint wonders if you can get money at a shop if you sold this love, whatever it is. He doesn't think one could get a lot of money for it, since everyone claimed to have it already anyway. He wishes someone would show it to him, so he can exchange it for food. Mrs. Roberts says you can't get anything without money, but sometimes you can exchange things you don't want.

On Clint's twelfth birthday, Mr. Roberts brings him a whole slice of chocolate cake. If Clint were any smarter, he would have been wary. But Clint is dumb as a sack of potatoes, so he excitedly grabs for the cake. Mr. Roberts holds the slice above Clint's head and promises him the whole thing if he would do as Mr. Roberts demands. Clint is too focused on the cake to realize that he is being dragged into the study again.

Mr. Roberts grabs a pair of scissors and cuts away Clint's pants, stuffing a smelly handkerchief in his mouth. Clint closes his eyes, because he may be dumb, but he knows nothing pleasant can happen to him in this room. He is right.

When Mr. Roberts pushes into him, Clint screams around the handkerchief, mind numbed by pain and agony. Everything hurts. He is sure he blacks out at some point, but when he wakes, Mr. Roberts is still towering above him. His backside throbs and Clint tries to breathe through the pain. The world seems grey. Clint sobs for the first time in years, huge heaving sobs, his chest hurting with the burden of the world and the grief of his pain. He wants Barney. He wants his daddy or his mommy. He wants GI Joe, with his large gun to shoot Mr. Roberts in the head like Captain America shot Hitler in the movie that Mrs. Roberts likes to watch.

Mrs. Roberts says Clint is making God angry by refusing to do as his elders tell him. Mrs. Roberts says God gives pain to those He does not like. Clint thinks this God must be really pissed at him, but he can't figure out what he did to make Him so mad. Whether or not he listens to his elders, he ends up in pain anyway.

When Mr. Roberts brings the red hot poker iron from the fireplace to Clint's wane form bent over the study table, Clint is still catching his breath. His eyes widen with fear when he sees what Mr. Roberts is holding.

He never gets to eat the chocolate cake, but he would have the letters "S-L-U-T" branded on his ass for the rest of his life.

The next night, Clint grabs the knife from the kitchen and stabs both Mr. and Mrs. Roberts repeatedly in their sleep. His hands are the same deep scarlet as the wrapping paper from many christmases ago. He wonders if this is how his mother felt after she stabbed his father.

He scrambles and collects whatever money he finds in the house, packs a duffel bag full of clothes, grabs whatever food he can reach from the pantry and makes a run for it. He leaves through the backyard, stopping to retrieve Joe from his place in the tree trunk.

13

The night of his thirteenth birthday, Clint is pressed against the wall in a dark alleyway in Seattle, Washington.

He is panting, as the large man behind him thrusts again and again. When they are done, he gives Clint the promised hundred dollars. Instead of zipping up and driving away like most of the clients his pimp has brought him, this one stays. He slides down the wall and sits next to Clint on the ground, passing him a cigarette.

"How old are you, kid?"

"Eighteen," Clint says, the words rehearsed and automatic.

"Right," he says, his tone clearly indicating that he is playing along. "Listen, I have a circus troupe. We are touring the country. A lot of people, food three times a day and a place to sleep. None of this nonsense. It is like a family. We are leaving tomorrow at dusk. You can come to this address and ask for Sly. That's me. Make up your mind, kid."

Clint takes the card Sly hands to him, trying to understand. Why is the client giving him his address? If he goes, does Clint have to service only him or the whole of this "circus"? He called it a family. Clint is very wary of families.

But the three meals a day part is exciting. Clint can't deny that he won't miss his pimp. The guy is a jerk, and he keeps getting fucks on the side for free from Clint whenever there is a lull in clients. Besides, if he gets in too deep, he can simply take off again. It's how Clint has lived his life for the last year - fuck, earn, run, fuck, earn, run.

The next evening finds Clint in his tattered jeans and the duffel bag, standing in front of a massive tent. He is introduced to Sly again and given the task of clearing the horse shit in the stables. He spends his nights in Sly's tent, sleeping on comfortable sheets with pillows (he has never had pillows before!) after the older man is done with him.

Clint learns several valuable things in the circus. He learns pick pocketing, juggling, balance, stealth, knife throwing and deception. He learns that the carnie folks are all people like him, people without roots or a place to call home, people going along with wherever the wind may take them. People who are trying to build something out of their life. There is a deep sense of respect in the circus - nobody asks anyone to share their past. You can be whoever you want to be without your past hanging over your head.

On his first night at the circus, Clint sees Sly shoot arrows while hanging upside down from a trapeze. He remembers Jane's Robin Hood book and is mesmerized again by the stretch of the bowstring and the sharp tang of the noise that follows. Two nights later, after sucking Sly's brains out through his cock, he asks to be taught archery.

"Kid," Sly laughs, his fingers in Clint's hair, Clint's face pressed cheek down on Sly's stomach. "It is not like throwing a couple of balls in the air. You can't learn it in a day. It takes discipline, skill, talent."

Clint expects this response, but he is more than prepared. By now, he has had a lot of practice at giving someone sex to get what he wants. Two orgasms later, Sly agrees to craft Clint his own bow.

The first time Clint holds a bow in his hand, he feels what normal people would say being home feels like. His whole being finds purpose and his world reduces to the target and the target alone. He feels like it is an extension of his arm, a long-lost friend finally back in its rightful place. Sly teaches Clint Barton to shoot his first arrow.

Years later, an aged and wrinkled Sly would watch on a television screen as a man clad in stealth black jumps off tall Manhattan skyscrapers and shoots at alien invaders. Sly would die later that week, satisfied that he has done his part in changing the world.

14

On Clint's fourteenth birthday, the circus is doing its last show in Portland, Oregon before returning to Seattle. Their year long trip across the country is coming to an end, but much of the show's program has changed since the first show Clint saw all those weeks ago.

Now, the main headliner act is called _"The Adventures of the Amazing Hawkboy"._ Clint's archery skills surpassed that of Sly in less than a week, and his portion of the show started growing in popularity steadily. Now, Clint performs a fifteen-minute act in which he shoots apples off the heads of members of the audience, drops people hanging off ropes to the circus floor and shoots with deadly accuracy while hanging upside down, swinging, running or under water. He still spends his nights fucking Sly. He has his own bed now with his own pillows, but they never get used.

Portland is beautiful this time of the year, but Clint doesn't get much of a chance to explore.

That night, in the middle of the show, Clint is hanging upside down a trapeze. Circus hands are going around the crowd, placing apples on the heads of volunteers. That's when Clint sees him for the first time, though neither would remember for another decade. At that time, on that day, all Clint will register is the bluest of blue eyes in the face of the beautiful boy. He won't remember anything else. He won't remember how this brave boy hadn't even flinched when Clint's arrow had pierced the apple off his head. He won't remember the Captain America t-shirt the boy wore.

But he will always remember those bluest blue eyes.

Later that night, Clint will lie on Sly's bed, holding GI Joe in his hand and wonder if Joe's painted-on eyes are blue.

15

On the night of Clint's fifteenth birthday, he is walking back to Sly's temporary shit hole of an apartment in Columbus, Ohio, carrying bags of groceries in both arms. Groceries are still a foreign concept to him. Grocery stores terrify him, because of how they are stacked from floor to ceiling with food. Clint has never known of any place or any person that offers food without expecting things from Clint in return. Sly tells him to calm the fuck down and not be a fucking drama queen. As long as Clint gives the store his money, they will let him leave with his food, with his butter and noodles, with his crisps and tv dinners. Just to be safe, Clint always leaves more money than the bill amount every time.

It is late, and Clint is not walking past a nice part of town. He keeps to the shadows, to the backs of alleyways and tries to make his way to the apartment unseen. He does not know how to walk the streets like a normal person, without looking over his back for the next assailant. He does not know if he deserves to walk on the streets like everyone else does.

That's when he hears it, the muted sobs and the sound of harsh breathing. There is a slap and then another, and now the sobs get louder followed by muffled screams. Clint's whole body comes to a standstill, his hands shaking. He grips the bags harder, trying to get his breathing under control, to stop the images flooding his vision. Clint hasn't been back in that alleyway in forever, visited occasionally only in dreams. But in that minute, he feels like he never left.

_Nobody ever came for you. Leave it alone. Go home and let Sly fuck it out of you._

_Nobody ever came for you._

_It is a girl. Can't be more than sixteen._

_Older than you at the time._

_Nobody ever came for you. Maybe she deserves it too._

_Maybe she is hungry. Maybe she is doing this because her stomach is concave, curling into her body. Maybe she can't remember what bread tastes like._

_Nobody ever came for you._

He drops the bags and leaves them behind on the corner of the pavement, running into the dark alleyway. He pushes the man off the girl, and in the dim light from a window nearby, he focusses to see the beast. He is at least two times Clint's size and four times bigger than the girl he was bent over. She pants, and quickly does up her jeans. Clint looks at her and yells,

"Go! Go! Take the food and go!"

She looks around blindly, like a hurt wild animal and spots the bags Clint has left on the ground. A little milk is leaking through the paper bag. She grabs the nearest two and runs. Clint hopes she grabbed the bag with the box of condoms. He is not stupid, he knows all he is doing is keeping her off the business tonight. She will be safe only till her food runs out.

When Clint gets home that night, he will return with lesser grocery bags that he started with, no money, swollen face and a broken arm. Sly tuts at him and washes the grease off his face with a damp cloth.

"If only you'd had your bow with you," he says. Clint wonders if that would have made any difference to the other whores the beast will fuck this week alone.

The next morning, he kisses Sly goodbye, grabs his bow and a handful of arrows and leaves with GI Joe tucked into his single duffel bag. Hours later, Columbus City Police will find the beast dead with an arrow in his heart.

16

Clint is sixteen when the Russian Mafia comes looking for the boy who shot one of their spies. It is where he meets Rafael.

Rafael is six foot three, olive skin and deep brown eyes. He speaks with a Spanish accent. Clint is too much of a brute to appreciate any kind of beauty, but even he can tell that everything about Rafael is beautiful. The first time Clint meets Rafael, he is drugged to the gills, tied to a chair and being interrogated by a man speaking Russian. Rafael walks into the room and yells at Mr. Big and Beefy Russian and gets everyone to leave the room.

"What is your name, kid?"

Clint spits in his face. He broke loose from the ropes minutes ago (really, he is a circus performer. He spent years learning to get out of wrought iron chains. It is embarrassing that they tried to hold him with _ropes_ ) He grabs the back of the chair, smashes Rafael's head with it and makes a break for the window.

Three days later, Rafael tracks him down and comes to his hideout on the top of a really large willow tree, miles into the Cuyahoga National Park. Clint has lived there for months. The authorities don't know he exists, and he can't help but be grudgingly impressed.

"I have come alone," says Rafael, "I just want to talk to you."

"I have nothing to say."

"You ran away from the Mafia with enough drugs in your system to fell a lion. You took out one of our most important henchmen from a hundred yards away. You are hiding from the police and the feds. We can protect you."

"In exchange for what?"

"Jobs. Assignments. We can use someone with your skill-set."

"No."

"You don't get to take the moral high ground here - "

"I am nobody's soldier. I don't take orders."

"In bed, you do."

"That changes nothing."

"Three meals a day. Rich food. All you can eat banquets. Live-in chef. A lot of money. I will fuck you every night."

"I don't talk to anyone except you."

"Can be arranged," nods Rafael, the first hint of a smile tugging his lips.

"You don't tell me anything about the mark, except what I need to know."

"That's the way we work."

"No paper reports, no information on those computer things. I am verbally briefed."

Rafael raises his eyebrows, thrown by the strange demand. Clint knows he is trying to understand why. He might even assume Clint doesn't want to leave a paper trail. Hardly. None of them ever hit upon the simplest explanation: Clint can't read. They never think simple, with their big brains and thick wallets. Clint can't think not simple. It's what you do when you are dumb as rocks.

"Yes."

"I decide when I want an assignment."

"Yes." says Rafael.

"Thousand dollars now. You leave me alone till next Wednesday."

"Sunday."

"Wednesday. Take it or leave it."

Cash exchanges hands.

"I will see you soon, bonito."

Years later, a Russian woman will tell him 'bonito' means 'beautiful'. Clint won't believe it even then.

18

In between taking down police officers in Glasgow, burning down buildings in Tokyo and infiltrating intelligence teams in Canberra, Clint comes home to Majorca. At age eighteen, Clint thinks this love thing Mrs. Roberts talked about finally makes sense. What he feels for Rafael - that has gotta be love, right? Or is he too broken to not be able to love at all? Maybe it was only for normal people. A lot of things are.

Clint remembers thinking that love must be very cheap, because everyone seems to have it. Now he knows how wrong he was. Everyone thinks they have it, but they really don't. Love is very like control in that way. Clint thinks he has control over his life, but he really doesn't.

When they are between assignments, Rafael fucks him every night. He is sore and dirty and in pain, but when is he not? Rafael fucks him hard enough to make him bleed, but doesn't leave afterward. He stays by Clint and kisses his hair. This must be love, right? Rafael buys him strawberries. Rafael gives him food (and sometimes, when he is really good, rich people food) without Clint having to ask for it. Clint doesn't remember the last time he went to sleep hungry and cold.

It terrifies the crap out of him.

Rafael goes to church every Sunday, no matter which part of the world they are in, which enemy they are taking out. Rafael says it is his penance. Clint doesn't know (doesn't want to know) who he is killing and why. But he knows he is killing good people, not-broken-people. He can't bring himself to feel remorse for that. He doesn't know how. He never saw Sly feel remorse. Mr. Roberts used to read the Bible every night just after breaking Clint open on his cock. Clint doesn't know what remorse is. But Rafael says he needs God to see him every week so that he will remember to protect him. Clint thinks this God must have really bad memory if he forgets to protect someone as perfect as Rafael. But he understands now why God never protected him. Clint isn't perfect enough or important enough to be protected, anyway.

He asks Rafael if he would take GI Joe with him to church, so that God can remember Joe and protect him. Rafael laughs a loud, belly-shaking laugh like Clint has said something funny and stupid. He probably has, he is too stupid to know for sure. Rafael does take Joe with him to church, and when he comes back, Clint can swear Joe is blessing him with something good and wonderful.

22

Clint is twenty-two when Rafael screws up a hit mission. The boss man, as Clint has always referred to him in his head, wants both of them dead before the night is out. They run, grabbing whatever they can - money, clothes, food (always food) and Clint's bow.

This is something he can do, living on the streets and hiding. Finally, there is something Clint is better at than Rafael, and he teaches him to break into stores and pick-pocket when they run out of cash. They live in Brazil for a while, but keep moving - first to Bolivia, then to Paraguay. They are in Chile when the mob catches up to them, and Clint doesn't understand. Rafael knows the Mafia's weaknesses, knows the areas of the world where their hold is weak. Rafael had wanted them to run to Chile, with its close knit network of allies.

Clint is too stupid to understand what is happening, even when he is knocked back to the floor by a gunshot. But when he catches on, it is already too late. This man that he loves, this beautiful Rafael has just sold Clint to the mob. He wishes it would hurt more, but it doesn't. Rafael is still the best man Clint has ever known, even if he did betray him. Clint wonders how fucked up that makes him. Rafael bends over his prone form, the bullet in his chest inching closer every second to his heart. Clint looks into his eyes and thinks, "You were too good to be true, anyway."

The pain makes thinking too difficult and he is sure he imagines the whispered "Lo siento, bonito." Rafael presses his lips to Clint's, removes GI Joe from their duffel bag and places him on Clint's chest before leaving him to die in the plain grassland, with only the sound of birds chirping for company. Clint is oddly touched by Rafael's thoughtfulness. Yes, he is truly fucked.

He lies there, waiting for death to take him. He remembers Jane's story books of heaven and hell that await someone who dies. He doesn't have a preference of one over the other. He can't tell how hell can be any worse than this life, anyway. As long as there is food in both places....

Suddenly, he is hungry. Can dying people be hungry? That is probably his curse, that he is always hungry. Clint is hungry even after he has just finished a meal. He can't help but laugh, a wheezing painful laugh at the thought. His body is so troublesome. It doesn't even let him die in peace. He wants it all to be over but all he can think of is the smell of bacon and eggs, of smelly peas from that birthday dinner all those years ago.

He looks at Joe, set atop his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. Joe is holding a long gun raised upward in air, its pointy tip has made Clint bleed on more than one occasion when he has fallen asleep on it. The paint is chipped in places and his other palm broke off years ago, during an assignment in Sri Lanka. But after Rafael, Joe is the most perfect thing Clint has ever seen.

He gets up, every movement painful and demanding effort he didn't think he was capable of. He doesn't want to die now because he really wants to eat something first. He wants Indian pilaf and Chinese orange chicken and stale bread and really thick butter. He wants proof that he is alive, and that he is hungry. Survival is about being able to eat, and Clint can still eat a whole horse. He grabs Joe, his blessed Joe and crawls his way in the direction of the nearest settlement. He doesn't think he can. He doesn't think he has the strength, but Joe is strong enough for the both of them. After all, Rafael took Joe to the church. Joe is protected by God. Maybe that extends to Clint as well for a little while. He considers using Joe's pointy end to wrench the bullet out, but he knows enough about gunshot wounds. The bullet is blocking the blood flow. It is stopping Clint from bleeding out.

It is late dusk when Clint drags himself into the home of a nice old lady, the house in the middle of miles and miles of grassland. It reminds him of the Roberts' home and their neighbors, who had lived their peaceful little lives with no idea of a little boy's screams less than a mile away from their beds.

Her name is Maria too. When she tells him her name, Clint wants to push her away and run. But he can't. His legs don't listen to his brain, so he lies on Maria's cot as she wipes him down, makes him sip water from a dusty cup and bandages his chest. She lets him recuperate for three weeks. Clint doesn't know what she wants from him. He doesn't know why she is helping him. He asks her on the day he decides to leave.

"How can I not? You were bleeding and about to die."

"That is not a reason."

"Why do you want a reason to be kind?"

"Don't most people?"

She sighs and brushes the hair away from his eyes.

"Do you?"

"What?"

"Do you need a reason to be kind to someone? Will you help an old woman carry her heavy bags just because you can, or will you ask her what she can do for you in return?"

"I am not like that, I can't be like that. I don't belong in a world like that."

"We all do, Clint. We are all capable of being kind, if we just paused long enough to listen to the other person's pain. You want to know why I saved you. I don't know yet. Maybe you will find out a month from now, a year from now or ten years from now. Someday, you will do something that makes you happy I saved you. When you find out, promise me this. Promise me that you will send me a letter and tell me what it is. Tell me what changed in the world because I helped you live."

24

Clint is twenty-four when he starts to piss off various government agencies with his skills. He doesn't really do much damage, in fact, the tricks he pulls are not even on the same scale as some of the hits he made with the Mafia. It is embarrassing that the first time a cop is interested in him is after he breaks into a department store to steal milk and bread. Years later, after he has learned to read and write a bit, he will read _Les Miserables_ and think back to this moment.

He slips the clutches of the FBI multiple times and manages to enter the States again. He keeps a low-profile and finds a job in a bakery in Chicago. He learns to play with dough, to make fresh bread, to experiment with flavors and to make cupcakes. The hardest thing about the job is to keep his hands to himself, to not shove every ingredient into his mouth before it gets a chance to be cooked.

He makes a measly wage, but it is enough. It keeps him off the streets. The owner lets him sleep in the storage closet and lets him eat some of the stale bread. It is more than Clint had for years growing up. Now and then, the itch returns, to grab his bow and shoot some bad people. But after Maria, Clint tries to be good. He tries to give her a reason to be happy that she saved him.

But when he comes across a bearded giant of a man shoving a crying baby into a dumpster behind the bakery, that's when Clint loses it. That's when he grabs his bow and puts seven arrows in the guy's chest, without a moment's pause. He breaks into the department store across the street, feeds the baby some milk and takes her to the home of Mrs. Smith down the street.

Mrs. Smith was one of the bakery's loyal customers. She and her husband have been trying to conceive for years. She is one of the kindest people Clint has met, but that might not mean much, as he hasn't met a lot of kind people. He figures the child will be happier with a family that wants kids. Not once does it occur to him to take her to child protective services or the police. Families like the Roberts' get kids through child protective services. Clint will be damned before he puts other children through the system.

He grabs his stuff and runs. The bakery owner has seen Clint's bow and there is a body of a man with arrows behind the building. It is not safe for him anymore. He runs again, without knowing that two days later, a secretive Government agency would ward off the entire street when they find the leader of a human organ trafficking ring lying dead in a dumpster with arrows in his chest.

A kind and gentle man with the bluest blue eyes is made head of the operation.

25

He is chased across the country.

He has been chased before, by Interpol and law enforcement, by police and foreign governments. But this is different. This is like a very focused and dedicated storm blocking Clint's every move. He would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy it a little bit.

He doesn't know who he has pissed off now.

This is not local police and it is definitely not the Feds. He knows the taste of a Fed operation. This is someone much more high profile. He wonders exactly who it was that he shot. Maybe it was a law enforcement official. Police don't care unless it is one of their own. Clint knows. He spent years hurting police officers when he worked for the mob.

He just hopes the baby is okay. He hopes she would grow up to be a scientist who solves some major world problem or something. He hopes there is a purpose to all his actions. He finally understands what Maria told him about kindness.

He wishes he could read. He wishes he took the time to learn at least the basics. He sees the same shapes on the jackets of the cops chasing him. No, they are not shapes, they are letters. He can only tell the "S" and the "L" because they are two of the four alphabets Clint knows up close and personal. It would be nice to know who is chasing him.

On Clint's twenty fifth birthday, he is resting on a rebar on the ceiling of the highest room in a seventeen story building. He never quite grows out of his habit to make a nest at a height, where people don't look. His senses are thrown into high alert by approaching footsteps. Who comes into an abandoned building in the middle of the night?

He is startled by the bluest blue eyes that stare up at him. He remembers those eyes. He saw them once before, but he can't for the life of him figure out where. The man is average looking at best, wearing a suit that probably cost more money than Clint has touched in his whole life and shiny shoes. He is wearing a boring tie. Everything about him is ordinary, except for those bluest blue eyes.

It takes Clint the heartbeat of a second to realize that unlike most people, this man came into the room looking up, like he knew Clint would be hanging upside down off the rebar.

"Hello," he says, and Clint thinks that is the kind of voice people sign over their lives for. It scares him. " I am Agent Phil Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."

"You guys need a better name, Agent."

His lips twitch, but barely curl into a smile. "We get that a lot. I am here to offer you a job."

"Thanks, but no thanks."

"You will find it extremely beneficial to accept this offer of employment and protection, Clint."

Clint winces, wondering how they know his name. He is a ghost, Clint has been very careful to not leave a trail. He has done his best to protect those who helped him, to protect Sly and the carnie folks, to protect even Rafael. Whoever this Coulson is, his people are very good.

"No names," he says.

"That will be difficult within our organization, but exceptions can always be made."

"I am not interested," says Clint, and now he is eyeing the window behind Coulson. They are seventeen floors up. Even Clint isn't stupid enough to jump from this high up to escape Agent Grim-and-Gristle with the stupid eyes.

"I can be very persuasive. After all, I spent a year hunting you down."

"You wasted your time. I am just a construction worker."

"Who can shoot targets hundred yards away with his eyes blindfolded, yes, I am aware."

"You have the wrong man. I am just an illiterate country hick trying to make a living."

"You are illiterate? That - has not been anticipated, but we can help with that. Your denial will be a lot more effective if you weren't hanging off a rebar, your knees curled around your custom-made bow."

"Huh?" Clint is thrown for a moment, less by the fact that he has no escape routes and more by something else Coulson said. "How do you know it is custom-made?"

"It is unlike any model we have seen, and we have seen them all. Your style of shooting is unique to that bow. You stretch and fold and shoot to that bow. It means you learned on that bow, so it is either custom made for you or it is a hand-me-down. It doesn't look old enough to be a hand-me-down, so custom made it is. Now, can we talk?"

Clint shrugs, straightens and jumps down, bow in one hand, quiver secured to his back. GI Joe, as always is in his backpocket. He smiles at Coulson, and for a moment, he truly regrets what he is about to do. In a different life, he thinks he would have liked this Coulson guy. In a split second, he shoots a harness arrow out the window and swings down, across the gap between buildings to land on the roof of the next one. Without turning back, he runs. He has had enough of organizations hiring him and then shooting at him.

27

It comes to an end on his twenty seventh birthday.

Clint has grown a deep sense of dislike for his birthday. Good things never happen on his birthday. He remembers that chocolate cake he never got to eat, and the brand on his ass. Next year, he is going to sedate himself to sleep through the entire darn day.

Right now, he is cuffed, hands behind the back of his chair and ankles to the feet. He has a bullet wound in his right shoulder, where the cop shot him in the middle of the chase. Since then, he has been left alone in the nondescript room, a lone chair and a desk.

He is surprised when Coulson walks in with a folder tucked under his arm. He looks older, the lines on his face more prominent since the last time they met. He slams the folder in front of Clint on the desk, and says, "Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Barton."

"You found a better name, good for you guys! Now, can I go?"

"No, sign here please."

"You have the weirdest recruitment interviews ever," he says. It is possible he is drugged a little bit, or has gone crazy from the pain in his shoulder. He isn't sure which option he likes more.

"Only for the most difficult candidates. If you can sign here, please? I will get you a medic to have that shoulder looked at," says Coulson, not skipping a beat.

"I am fine, I have a really high tolerance for pain. Not so much for jackass government agencies that threaten its potential employees."

"No, we shoot our potential employees. I am very good. The bullet went through the flesh, didn't nick anything important."

"YOU shot me?" Clint doesn't know why he is so shocked by that, maybe because he assumed Coulson is the kind of guy who wouldn't get his hands dirty in the field. But Clint knows enough about bullet wounds to know Coulson is right. The wound in his shoulder is not serious at all, just enough to incapacitate him. It wouldn't even affect the motion of his arm once treated. SHIELD wouldn't injure him badly enough to make his skills useless. He needs his arm to shoot.

"Yes, I do know how to operate a gun. Sign here," he repeats, pressing his finger to the file. "Oh sorry, my bad." Coulson pulls out a stamp pad from his breast pocket. "Stamp your thumb print here. We will work on getting you up to speed later."

"You are a piece of work, you know that? Hang on, I have questions," says Clint, more resigned than anything else. He doesn't know why he ever thinks he has any modicum of control over his life. He doesn't.

"Yes?"

"What is my job?"

"For the first six months, training and learning to play within our regulations. After that, you will be posted on assignments that require a sniper. I will be your official handler, meaning I am your liaison to SHIELD. I will monitor your health, your mental health and make sure the assignments you are given fit your skills. You get dental and health benefits, a place to stay and a monthly paycheck."

"I have a rapsheet. Under different names, but it exists."

"We are aware. The law enforcement bodies of concern will very politely avert their eyes when SHIELD asks."

"I don't want to be told anything about the mark, only enough to do my job," Clint's voice catches, throat dry as he remembers Rafael from years ago. He wonders when this Coulson will betray him.

"Rare but not unusual."

"Food?"

"We have a twenty four by seven cafeteria, free for SHIELD active agents. I will get you enrolled in a meal plan. The apple pie is to die for."

"I don't fuck without a condom. Anything else is game, but not without a condom."

For the first time in this entire conversation, Coulson is thrown. He pauses, and the hesitation is clear in the lines of his face. Something like pity crosses his expression and Clint feels like he has been stabbed.

"That is not part of your job description. You don't have to sleep with me. Or anyone. In fact, you can report it if anyone tries to force you."

"Sure, okay," Clint shrugs. Man, these G-Men take their official party line seriously. Whatever. He can stab him if he tries to fuck Clint without a condom or something. On the other hand, he gets medical insurance now, so surely if he gets an STD, they can treat it? Yeah, the condom is probably not that big of a deal anymore. It is the cafeteria that was the deal breaker for Clint. As long as they feed him...

Coulson doesn't seem appeased and he stares at Clint with an uneasy expression. Clint feels put on display, the overhead lamp not allowing any feature on his face to hide. After a moment, he gathers himself and shrugs to his bound hands.

Two other agents come in, covered in the same jacket with the familiar letters on the back. Clint thinks it probably says SHIELD. He wonders how that is spelled. His hands are untied and a medic works on his shoulder, as Clint presses his thumb to the pages.

"Thank you, Clint. Oh, and Happy Birthday."

*

He used to think the Mafia was competent. He may have as well been blind.

To say SHIELD is competent is understating it by several notches. SHIELD is a well-oiled machine; every cog, every bolt, every gear falling in place the way it is supposed to, the way Coulson wants it to. Clint learns pretty quickly that Coulson is very high up in the SHIELD ranks, very very very high up. He doesn't know why Coulson came chasing after him personally. He doesn't want to ask.

Clint is not good at working with people if he can't tell their motives. SHIELD is perfect, because every personal grudge, every vendetta, every story - your past histories get washed off at the door. You are there to do your job. You are respected based on how good you are at what you do. SHIELD takes their missions very seriously. These agents believe in the righteousness of what they accomplish everyday.

Clint's initial reasons for signing up were Coulson's offer of three meals a day and also because he has nowhere else to go. But now, three months down the line, he is choosing to stay because of how much fun he is having. For the first time in his life, Clint is being challenged to do better.

The first time he had trained in the shooting range, (to pass one of those zillion tests SHIELD puts its new recruits through) he had enjoyed himself in a way he never had before. He kept moving the targets back, because their default distance didn't challenge him. He played with his bow and new arrows for three hours straight, before realizing that he had an audience. What seemed like the entirety of SHIELD was packed in the corners of the hall, outside the zone of fire, watching.

Afterward, Coulson had smiled at him that special smile reserved for when Clint has been really good. Clint tries not to relate that smile to the smile Mr. Roberts used to give him when Clint had sucked him down like a good little bitch.

SHIELD confuses him.

He remembers his first night on site, in his SHIELD issued room with a bed and a key to the door. He remembers lying awake all night in his bed waiting for Coulson to come in and take what was his. He remembers crying into the pillow, guilty about eating three servings of the baked potatoes and the chicken. He wants to feel like he earned the food. How is he supposed to eat tomorrow if Coulson won't fuck him? He is ready to earn his keep but they won't take it. Why? Why are they feeding him? Is he supposed to go find Coulson? Clint remembers playing the stupid orientation packet tape (it is a book for most new recruits, but Coulson had had a tape made for Clint so that he could listen to it instead of read it). He had listened to the whole thing three times that night, but there had been no instructions in there about sex.

Clint had asked Coulson later, but the older man had just gone stiff and shrugged. The next day, he had brought Natasha to Clint and told her to explain things to him.

Natasha, sweet, gorgeous and deadly Natasha was just like him, without being like him at all.

Unlike Coulson, Nat doesn't flinch when Clint says things like "If I don't get fucked, I can't eat." She doesn't look at him with pity, she doesn't gape like Clint is speaking a foreign language. She understands. She convinces Clint, finally, that SHIELD really does not want him to sleep with every agent in the building.

"Why are they feeding me, then?"

"You get food and a paycheck for your shooting skills, Clint. You are paying them back by training hard and becoming field-ready," she explains.

He lets that sink in, new and inexplicable as it is. He trusts Natasha, because in less than ten minutes of knowing her, he can tell she is his kind. She is bruised and battered, she is a warrior; he can tell she trusts the world even less than he does and boy, does that take doing.

"I trust Coulson," she tells Clint, sipping a strawberry pineapple smoothie in the cafeteria. Clint still can't get over how there is so much food here and how nobody bats an eyelid if he helps himself whenever. "I trust Coulson with my life. He is the best there is. He is fair and decent and kind. He would never bull shit you. If you fuck up, believe me, you will hear all about it. We could do some much worse than Coulson. You will see."

Clint doesn't know what to say to that. Trusting someone with his life is a foreign concept. He doesn't know how to do it willingly.

"Phil wants you to see the SHIELD shrinks," she says. "You will have to get a profile done anyway to get your clearance."

"What am I supposed to talk about?"

"I have no idea," she says. "I usually just go in and answer their questions the way they expect me to answer. You know, trauma, victim, daddy issues - the usual."

Clint tries to pretend that any of that means something to him. He is not a victim, he has not had any trauma and he hasn't had a daddy for years, unless you count that guy he blew in an alleyway once, who'd insisted Clint call him Daddy. He had not even tipped well, the bastard.

Clint goes to therapy anyway, because he feels obligated to give Phil what he wants. Phil is not taking sex from him, so he might as well get the cheaper trade-offs from Clint. Clint can't begrudge him these.

Dr. Parks asks him things like _"Tell me about your family.", "What happened to your brother?", "How old were you when you met the Roberts?"_ Clint doesn't understand the purpose of these questions. When they get to talking about Sly, he makes her promise that SHIELD won't go after him. She says their sessions are confidential as per regulation, but Clint trusts her kind face more than any rule carved in a dusty manual somewhere.

She will provide Agent Coulson with her medical evaluation of his mental state, and he is free to access her notes. He requests for a tape to be provided. He is learning to read but he isn't anywhere close to good at it. His tutor had mentioned some fuck-up called dyslexia. All he knows is that it is going to take longer than normal people for Clint to learn to read and write.

The only time he clams up during therapy is when Dr. Parks asks him about his relationship with food. She says he has something called an eating disorder, and that the constant pangs of hunger are an indication of underlying unresolved issues around the availability of food. He panics, as he always does when someone talks about how much he eats in a day.

"He promised!" He exclaims, before he can check himself. He is so out of control right now, mind gone into defensive mode, colored by betrayal. He knew something like this would happen! There was no way someone would just give him food and not expect anything in return. They were going to starve him, restrict his cafeteria visits - he was going to be hungry again. "He promised! Coulson said I can eat however much I wanna, I offered to fuck him he wouldn't take! He said nobody will stop me if I wanted a second portion - he promised! He promised! He promised!"

He is paralyzed, brain frozen and dumber than usual, unable to comprehend Dr. Parks moving to the intercom buzzer. He doesn't realize when he is half-carried out of the room by a couple of junior agents, he doesn't come back to himself till he is in the medical wing, Coulson sitting quietly by his side. He thinks they must have knocked him out at some point, because he doesn't remember much of how he got here from Dr. Parks' office.

"Go away, I don't wanna talk to you!"

"You don't have to talk," says Coulson, closing the file he was reading, his legs crossed. "You just have to listen to what I have to say. Can you do that?"

"NO!" Clint screams. He knows he is being unreasonable, he should be smart and listen to whatever lies Coulson is going to feed him now. He needs to know what the official party line is before he can plan to escape this shit hole.

Coulson merely sighs.

"Clint, nobody is going to restrict your food intake. You can eat as much as you want. I have seen how long and hard you train in the gym. So, there is no medical reason to stop you from eating how much ever you want."

"That's not what she said - !"

"Dr. Parks was merely making a diagnosis based on your eating habits. Nobody is taking anything away from you. However," Coulson pauses, "It is my wish that you continue to see Dr. Parks - "

"How do I know they won't throw me out of the cafeteria?"

"They won't. I promise - "

"Well bullshit, I don't trust you! You promise and promise and promise - "

"Clint, what promise have I made to you so far, that I have broken? I am not holding food over you, waiting for you to screw up. If you screw up, it will be on the field, during an assignment. You might get benched, you might get stuck in a lower level office filing paperwork, but that is as far as punishment goes. There is nothing you can do, personally to me or for me that will make me withhold food from you. That is cruel and unkind. That is not the way I roll. Do you understand?"

Clint is taken aback, because he has never heard Coulson speak for so long. He nods meekly, wondering why the hell he would agree to trust this man, this man who does not fuck him, who won't beat him or hurt him, who only gives him everything Clint ever wanted - food, new arrows, range time, his own room with a key! - this man who gives Clint everything he ever wanted, but won't take anything in return.

He must be mad.

"Why are you being so kind to me?" He can't help but ask. He wishes someone, anyone would explain this to him, so that he doesn't feel so unworthy, so undeserving of everything. He feels like a freeloader who is getting all the gifts in the universe, only to be told its all on the house. Kindness scares him, it throws him off his game and makes him paranoid, concerned about motives and suspicions and intentions.

"Because everyone deserves kindness, Barton. Especially you." Phil pauses, considering. "But you won't accept that answer. So how about this? You scored 736 on your range test yesterday, three hundred points above SHIELD's best archer. I am being kind because you are three hundred points better than the rest of SHIELD put together. If you keep improving, our kindness will continue. If your scores touch 900 in the next week, I will clear you for a mission. You must be getting cabin fever being stuck here. How about that? Food, money, exciting mission all in exchange for performance on the range. Can we do that?"

Clint realizes that his mouth is hanging open, but for the first time today, they are talking about something he can understand. He can comprehend a clear one-for-one exchange, a simple give and take. He can deal. He nods.

"I am going to do you one better," says Coulson. "At least once everyday, for the next week, I will eat a meal with you. I will come to the cafeteria. If I am with you, nobody will stop you, throw you out or not give you food. You will soon see that they will feed you even if I am not there. Is that alright?"

Clint nods again. He has never eaten with someone before. Rafael used to say Clint had horrid manners, and when they were on an assignment, they were rarely in the same timezone or location to eat together. Rafael had fed him a lot, had bought him fruits and rich foods, but they had never eaten together. The last time he had shared a meal was probably the night of his birthday, when he and Barney had eaten those smelly peas.

Something very vulnerable and painful makes itself known in the center of his chest, and he is overcome by an urge to be held by Coulson. He wishes he could turn invisible, so that Coulson can't see his eyes, that is, embarrassingly being filled with tears.

The older man rises and presses Clint to his chest anyway, a half-shrug and a half-hug before leaving the room, the silence filled by Clint's quiet sobs.

28

He survives, shines and thrives in the life Coulson builds for him at SHIELD.

When Clint starts doing missions, very quickly, the Clint-Tasha-Coulson team becomes stuff of SHIELD legend. They are good, they are better than good, they are like a precisely co-ordinated military strike. Nat challenges him as a fighter, an athelete, a combatant. Phil challenges every cell, every muscle, every thought that Clint has, breaks him down and rebuilds him with every mission.

Phil is unlike any man Clint has ever met.

Phil is so kind, so good, so perfect that on some days, Clint doesn't want to stand too close to him, lest he taint Phil with his ugliness. He is SHIELD's most efficient agent, not because he is a sound tactician or a ballsy commander. He is, but what makes Coulson invaluable is how much he is trusted by every soldier in the field. It is an open secret within SHIELD that Coulson will first and foremost, do what is best for his people, the mission be damned. Just being around Phil makes Clint feel like a better person.

He has a fucking epiphany on a perfectly ordinary day, a year into his work with SHIELD. It does not occur to him during an important life event. It does not come when Phil is pressing hard against his chest, administering CPR to get Clint to breathe on a mission gone awry. It does not come when Phil has curled his palm around Clint's to teach him to write his alphabets. It does not come during one of Phil's customary 'you-did-good' talks. It does not come during a road trip to an antique comic store across the state to procure an old Captain America card. It comes on a perfectly ordinary Wednesday, when he is sitting across from Phil at a cafeteria lunch table. Clint realizes that he wants to share his pudding cup with Phil, because Phil has a sweet tooth.

For the first time since losing Barney, Clint wants to share food.

He is stumped. The air in his lungs tastes heavy and stagnant. Clint forgets how to breathe. How does a person live with this feeling in their chest? He wants to be better, be a little less broken for Phil. Is this what love is, that thing his mama said they shared?

Clint doesn't know what to do with this feeling, so he shelves it aside.

On his twenty eighth birthday, for once, Clint wants something good to happen. He remembers someone telling him that birthdays are about gifts. There is only person Clint wants to give a gift to, but what does a man like him have to give a man like Coulson? Broken, damaged Clint with an eating disorder and a history of trauma, according to Dr. Parks; what does Clint have to give a man like Coulson, raised in Portland, family of six brothers and sisters, all-round American values, perfection and wholesomeness, as far away from being broken as possible?

Coulson had taken Clint to meet his family once. They were both injured after a mission in Oregon and needed a safehouse to lay low. Coulson had dragged Clint's ass to his parents' home and they had stayed put for three days. They had been the worst three days of Clint's life. Theoretically, he had always known how different their worlds were. To be hit in the face with the stark contrast had reopened old wounds. Phil had a dad who did not cheat on his wife. Phil had siblings who did not get molested by adults. Phil was normal. Phil went to school, was a mathlete, won science fair contests, broke his leg playing football, took a break year to study art, learned to cook a mean lasagna from his grandmother, collected Captain America memorabilia and was an all-round perfect son and brother. Clint was as far away from this idyllic world as possible.

In good conscience, Clint would never inflict his broken and damaged person on anyone, let alone someone he adored and cherished like Phil. Phil deserves someone better, someone whole and fresh and deserving of him. All Clint can do is love Phil the only way he knows how. When you love someone, you feed that person. You share food, without any expectation of reciprocity. That is the only definition of love that Clint knows.

So he shares his food.

The first time he had handed Phil his pudding cup, the graceful eyebrow had arched high. Phil isn't an idiot, Clint knows Phil has read all of Dr. Parks' notes. He knows what food means to Clint. Clint is grateful that Phil merely accepts the cup and makes no remark. They are both aware of what passed between them, but are happy to let it remain unspoken.

Now, food seems hardly enough to express how much Phil means to Clint. So on Clint's twenty-eighth birthday, Clint decides to give Phil the closest thing to his heart - he puts GI Joe in an empty box and wraps it with red wrapping paper. He finds a Captain America sticker and puts it on the cover, and writes "From Clint" in a red sharpie. He knows Phil will love the sticker but more importantly, he will be proud of how Clint managed to write the two words neatly without mistake.

He takes it to Phil's office at the end of the workday and places it on his desk.

"Happy Birthday," Phil says to him, barely looking up from his paperwork.

"Thank you. I brought this for you."

Phil raises his head and stares at the wrapped box. Clint feels quite silly now, giving Phil an old broken toy. Joe is important to him, yes, but Phil is probably going to be insulted. This was a bad idea.

"You know, other people give presents to the birthday boy. Not the other way around." Phil smiles, soft and crinkling at the corners of his lip. Clint can't imagine what he would do if Phil gave him a present. Phil has already given him so much, he doesn't know how he will ever repay Phil for his kindness.

"I wanted to change the rules and give you this."

Phil is definitely curious now but trying very hard to not give it away. He reaches for the box and looks at the sticker. He smiles at Clint again, and the archer can feel his knees turn to jelly.

"Well done," he says. "You spelled everything right."

Clint is a little miffed that Phil doesn't say anything about the Captain America sticker. The wrapper comes off rather slowly, but soon enough Phil is cradling Joe in his palm.

"You are giving me this? You are giving me GI Joe?"

"Um, yeah - I guess it is stupid, you don't want a dumb broken thing - "

"No. No, you think something is dumb and broken, but Clint, what if, what if - I see it as valuable and lovely?"

"Ah huh er," Clint mumbles, looking everywhere but straight at Coulson, not understanding how to respond. "You can, erm, keep Joe if you like him. He is - he was given to me by my parents. He is - my best buddy, after you. I want you to have him, I can't think of anything else to get you and he is all I have, he is the best thing I have - but he is pretty worthless if you try to get any money - "

"Clint," breathes Phil, and just like that, Clint stops talking. Phil is using his real-Phil voice, his not-your-official-handler-but-a-normal-person voice. Phil is talking to him and Clint has nothing more important to do in the entire universe than listen to him when he is talking.

"Clint, I want you to listen very carefully to me, okay?" Phil asks. He rises up from his chair, carefully places Joe back in his box and moves the box to his desk drawer, safe and secure. He walks around his desk to come and stand next to Clint, gently pressing his palms to Clint's shoulders, meeting his eyes, kind, always so kind.

"I want to kiss you now. Not because you are my asset, not because you report to me, not because you have to follow my orders, not because you gave me Joe, not in exchange for food or money or your skills. No, only because I want to. Because I think you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I want to kiss you. So with no ulterior motive and no other expectations, can I kiss you, please?"

Clint has been kissed many times in his life. He has been kissed with perversion, painfully, violently, in the throes of lust, with emotion and even with something akin to a facsimile of love. But never once has anyone asked permission to kiss him. How ironic then, that the one man Clint would give no-barriers access to is the one man who asks him for his consent.

Clint nods, tentative and shy, which is just ridiculous, because Clint Barton has done things, sexual things that can make your hair curl and heart jump in your chest. He does not get shy about a kiss, and yet here he is, flushing to the tips of his hair, as Phil holds his face between his palms and kisses him, like a dying man tasting nectar for the last time. Phil kisses him long and deep, gentle and probing, warm and determined to make Clint see stars. Clint has never been kissed like this before.

They break apart after a few minutes. Phil looks at him like he is the world's most fascinating piece of puzzle and Clint blushes again, unable to account for everything that he feels. So many emotions, so many feelings, it feels like his heart is about burst with them all.

"Clint?" asks Phil, "will you join me for dinner tonight?"

The world seems to stand still in that tiny corner of Phil's office, Clint still in his arms looking up earnestly into Phil's eyes. Finally, Clint figures out what his mama said about not needing anything else when you have love. Phil is asking him to share a meal with him, because that's what you do when you love someone.

"Yes," says Clint, his voice coming from a distant place deep within him. "Yes, I would love to."

29

The first time they have sex is actually months after that dinner date.

Phil takes Clint out on the town, he wines him and dines him, makes him try new things and new kinds of food that he has never eaten before. But not once, does Phil push for anything more. Clint keeps expecting that it will come but every time, Phil drives Clint back to his rooms at SHIELD and drives away.

Clint doesn't let the rejection sting. He knows he is damaged goods. He wouldn't want to fuck him either. Clint is better off without Phil ever seeing the scars on his ass, the brand of letters that will never disappear or the lines down his back. Phil would kiss him sometimes and call him _beautiful_. What if Phil saw him naked and never called him beautiful again? Clint loves it when Phil calls him beautiful. He thinks he will miss it when it is gone.

They don't fall into bed on the third date like it happens in the movies. There has never been anything traditional about the two of them. They don't have the time anyway, what with SHIELD digging up Captain America from the ice, Stark inventing a new element and the mystery hammer in New Mexico, they have both got their hands full.

Clint is terrified of meeting Captain America. The good Captain is everything Phil adores and respects, and everything Clint can never be. It is laughable, the idea that Clint could even aspire to be something like Captain America. But when they are introduced, Clint ends up meeting Steve, who is simple and down-to-earth and so earnest that Clint sees a little of Phil in him.

However, he is surprised to find a little of himself in Steve as well.

They are in the cafeteria and Clint is watching Steve go up the lunch line, reaching the counter and trying to pick what he wants. Clint sees him consider the baked potatoes, turn to see the number of people behind him in the lunch line and turn back to take in the quantity of potatoes in the tray. This is a familiar dance to Clint. Steve wants a second portion, but he is checking to make sure that there is enough food for the number of people still waiting to eat.

Clint feels like he has been punched in the gut with the realization. For all the appreciation the world bestows on Captain America, they forget that once, he was weak, frail and poor Steve Rogers who grew up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Steve has probably seen his quota of hungry nights.

They get along better after that, Steve and Clint. Clint is planning to sneak Phil's trading cards out of his locker and get Steve to sign them. Coulson would be thrilled, and Clint figures it is a better gift than a chipped and worn down action figure. (Phil actually has Joe on display on his desk, and more than once, Clint has heard him talk out loud to Joe about the paperwork he is doing. He is well-loved.)

On a mission in Moscow, Phil gets shot and nearly dies, bleeding profusely, drenching Clint's arms in scarlet. Clint loses his mind, but Natasha pulls it together and gets them out of there. Sitwell yells and dresses Clint down in the debrief, but all Clint can think about is how close he had come to losing the only thing in his life worth holding on to. What will he do if he loses Phil?

Clint had moved on after his father's death, Clint had picked himself up after Barney, Clint had killed the Roberts and ran away, Clint had glued the various broken pieces of him back together after every loss, after Rafael, after Sly; but this might be the break to destroy him. A world without Phil is too painful to contemplate.

Three days later, he gets the all-clear to see Phil, so he goes to Phil's apartment, carrying roses and GI Joe. He finds Phil in the bedroom, sitting up, a bandage covering his right side, but he doesn't look too worse for wear. Clint can't stop himself from putting his hands all over him, feeling for a pulse, pressing his ear to his chest, gaining his reassurance that Phil is alive.

He kisses Phil, long and deep, without asking for permission, which - not cool, Clint. Clint knows how it feels when someone takes your kisses from you without asking, he never wanted to do that to Phil. But from the way Phil moans into his mouth, he assumes that it is okay. They grab at each other's clothes, trying to remove as much as quickly as possible. Clint is shocked Phil is allowing this, because every time Clint had thought Phil was about to make a move, he had shied away. Clint had just assumed Phil wasn't interested in a broken thing like Clint. But the dent in his pajamas are telling Clint otherwise.

More confident now, Phil maneuvers them into a position with Clint on his back, legs spread and the Phil between them.

"Are you sure?" Phil asks, panting, resting his elbows on either side of Clint's body. "I don't want this to be something you feel obligated to - "

Clint kisses him to shut him up, because Phil always worries. Whatever he read in Dr. Parks' notes makes him think that Clint is some kind of victim, when he really isn't. He got fucked so that he could eat and stay alive. Clint definitely doesn't want to think about any of that right now, because all he needs is Phil and Phil alone.

Phil reaches across into the night stand to retrieve condoms and something else, a tube of some kind and Clint wonders if Phil is into some medicine kink. He doesn't care, as long as Phil fucks him, as long as Phil writes it into Clint's skin how alive he is, as long as Clint's body forgets Mr. Roberts, Rafael, Sly and every no-name who has fucked him, as long as Phil holds him like this forever..

He realizes that Phil is trying to get him to raise his ass up, but Clint doesn't want him to see the letters branded on his ass-cheek, where the spine ends and the bottom begins, the four ugly letters, the first letters Clint ever learned. He feels something cool touching his hole, and he shudders at the sensation, every point where Phil's fingertips touch him electrifying his skin.

"Shh, it will warm up in a second," Phil says, his fingers doing something lovely to the rim of his hole, stretching and needling.

"What is it?"

Everything comes to an abrupt stop, Phil's fingers halt in his ass and the man goes so stiff for a second that Clint looks over his shoulder to see if they are being attacked. He doesn't understand, and suddenly, Phil's eyes meet his. They are so sad, like they are in agony and they are slowly filling with tears. Oh no..

"Phil? I am sorry, is anything hurting? Phil? What did I say? Do you need to lie down?"

Phil moves and falls beside Clint, his head on the pillow and eyes raised to the ceiling. Clint is freaking out now, he doesn't know what he did wrong. His heart is beating hard and loud against his ribs. He has never known terror like this, terror when Phil shuts off from him. An eternity later, Phil turns, tears finding their way down his face into the pillow, and asks Clint.

"Tell me you know what this is," he says, and he holds out the little tube, the cold gel like medicine thing he had been using. Clint feels like he is seven years old again, Mr. Roberts quizzing Lucy and him on stuff from her school books and caning Clint for every answer he didn't know. Never mind that he didn't go to school to learn the answers, he still got caned because he was expected to know, to be smart.

"I - erm," Clint mumbles, trying to suppress the feeling that he is being tested, and somehow, Phil is going to be disappointed if he gets this wrong. He tries to read the letters on the tube, but his brain doesn't see letters on the best of days. There is no way he will see them today, at this moment. "I don't know." He says, with the finality of a man on the gallows.

Very slowly, very carefully, Phil gets up and swings his feet off the bed. He sits, his back to Clint, his shoulder hunched and his face buried in his palms. He weeps, silently but his whole body shaking. Clint is paralyzed, because Phil Coulson should not cry. Phil Coulson, SHIELD's unflappable man, cool as a cucumber, takes out mercenaries and killers with a pen-knife, kind and gentle Phil Coulson, that Phil Coulson should not cry, because if he did, if there were ever a reason for that Phil Coulson to cry, then something was screwed up about the universe.

"I am sorry, Phil, I am so sorry, I will - I dunno, I will learn what it is, please please stop crying. I will get Natasha to teach me, I am sorry, Phil - don't cry, oh my God, can I touch you, Phil?"

Phil pulls Clint toward him, and they stay like that, Clint lying sideways, his stomach pressed to Phil's back, Phil shaking with sobs and tears and Clint holding him, waiting for Phil to get this out, to talk when he is ready.

Finally, when Phil looks at Clint again, he asks, "How many times have you been fucked?"

The question throws Clint, he is so taken aback by its suddenness that he doesn't say anything for a second. He knows Phil has read all of Dr. Parks' notes. Clint hadn't held back the truth about his experiences. What was there to hide? He had only gotten what he deserved. He doesn't understand - did Phil just remember that he used to whore on the streets and changed his mind?

"Erm, a lot. Too many times to keep track, why?"

"Your Rafael. That Spanish guy. You said you were in love with him."

"What about him?" asks Clint, suddenly defensive. He gets up and tries to find his pants, the mood is ruined anyway. He did something unforgivable that Phil can't ignore, a flaw that can't be overlooked. He isn't getting fucked, he isn't getting Phil's cock tonight. Maybe never. He might as well get dressed.

"Did he never use this?" He holds up the stupid tube again, and Clint wants the grab it and throw it out the window, he hates that thing. He doesn't know what it is, probably it is something most school kids know about. Clint is stupid and he is too dumb to know something basic, and this, after everything, is Phil's deal breaker. Typical. His life was just screwed up.

"Phil, I don't even know what it is," Clint says. "I think I am going to go now. I hope you feel better. I will see you on Monday." Clint can physically feel his walls coming down around him, slamming shut and locking his feelings away. He just needs to hold it together till he gets to his room. Once he is there, he can have a good cry and get Phil Coulson out of his system.

"Clint," Phil's voice is pleading now, like he is begging for Clint to listen, like Clint wouldn't do anything he asked for. "Clint, please don't go. Please, can you come here? Can you sit down while I tell you what this is? Please?"

Well, when Phil asks like that, who is he to say no?

He sits next to Phil, their arms and shoulders touching, thighs brushing. He is wearing pants and Phil isn't, and the cool air of the room raising goosebumps on both their arms.

"This is lube," says Phil, the light from the blinds on the window making patters on their feet. "As in lubricant. You should use it during anal sex to make penetration easier, so that you don't get that burn or worse, tear something and bleed."

His first reaction is numbness. He can't process the words, and his brain is being slower than usual. When he understands the words, he realizes how everything makes sense now. He had always wondered why people loved sex so much when it burns so bad. At the time, he had thought the person doing the fucking was probably having fun. Clint had only ever been fucked. So in hindsight, it makes sense to him. But he doesn't grasp why Phil had reacted to drastically to this. After all, Clint doesn't know a lot of things. He didn't know who the President was and Natasha had good-naturedly ribbed him about it.

"Okay," he says, "I am sorry I didn't know about it. I have never used it before. I can buy some. We can always use it, if that's what you are worried about. But it's not like I need it, I can take it, Phil."

Phil gapes at him, like he is speaking a foreign language. For a minute, Clint wonders if Phil's injuries were also to the head. He is usually much more sharper than this.

"You don't - you can take - oh my God, Clint!" He sees Phil try to count to ten and breathe, he has seen him do this countless times while handling incompetent junior agents in the field. He counts to ten and breathes to get his emotions under control, to speak with reason and intelligence. Clint had always found it hot, but today he is just worried.

Phil calms down, and speaks again. "What about me? What about when I want you to fuck me? Will I have to take it as well, will there be any need for it then?"

Now Clint is sure Phil is just messing with him. "What do you mean when you want me to fuck you? Don't be ridiculous, Phil."

There is silence in the room again, before Phil gets up, hugs Clint to his chest and holds him. It feels nice. Whatever Phil is dealing with, at least he is not mad at Clint. If he were, he wouldn't be hugging Clint, would he?

"Clint, I had thought we could handle this, that I could handle this. I have known, always known about your sexual history, more than enough. I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to gather a force and hunt down every single one of those bastards. Oh the punishments I had planned for them, for that Rafael, that circus owner, that pimp! I still want to. There is a part of me that wants to chase down every one of those monsters and send them to Guantanamo Bay, but never have I wanted to kill more than I do today, than I do right now.

"My beautiful, beautiful Clint, I want you to know - you are important. You are important as I am in this relationship. Every relationship is of equals, and you are equal to me, in mind, body and soul. You get to fuck me as much as I get to fuck you. We are grown-ups, we get to sit down and talk about what we like in bed and what we don't. If something reminds you of something horrible from your past, you tell me and we stop doing that immediately. Nothing is more important to me than your happiness, your comfort, your love. Not orgasms, not nothing. Okay?"

Clint nods, only half-following what is being said, because Phil being angry on his behalf is so hot, so blindingly attractive that his brain feels empty.

"Clint, I love you. This is going to be difficult and hard, but I am willing to be patient and try taking this one step at a time. We should talk, we should talk a lot. I am going to ask you to trust me - "

"Always. You don't have to ask. I always trust you."

"Good, but I am going to need you to be honest with me, tell me what you like and what you don't like. I am going to blow your mind, baby, I am going to make sex feel good, so good, but not tonight. The moment is gone anyway, but we are going to pick this up again and try another day. No harm done, okay? Let me hear your voice, Clint."

"Okay," Clint says, "Will you hold me?"

"For as long as you want me to."

They lie down again, Clint in Phil's arms, back pressed to his chest, finally letting free the sobs of a lifetime. The pillow is soaked by the time he is done, he cries for a long time. Phil holds him through it all, his face pressed into the crook of Clint's neck. Clint doesn't know why he cries - maybe he cries a little for his mommy, his daddy, a little for Mr. Roberts, a little for Lucy and Jane, orphaned because of him, a little for Rafael, for Sly, for Miss Maria. But mostly, he cries for himself, because Phil thinks people have hurt him and Clint can't even remember when that was.

He is going to trust Phil, though. If Phil says he needs help, if Phil says he is hurt, if Phil says this isn't the way sex is supposed to work, he is going to trust and listen. Sometime later, both of them fall asleep. When he wakes, the morning sunshine is just beginning to stream through the blinds. Clint lets Phil sleep and moves to the living room to retrieve the flowers and GI Joe from the coffee table. He puts the flowers away, but brings Joe back with him to the bedroom. He places Joe next to the discarded condom and the all-important lube on Phil's night stand.

Lying back in bed, with Phil snoring gently into his hair, Clint realizes why he parted with Joe. Why he gave Joe to Phil.

Because deep down, he knew he no longer needed his little toy armed protector. Clint had a real GI Joe, all for himself.

~ fin ~

**Author's Note:**

> People have asked me questions about this verse on tumblr. There are additional snippets [here.](http://kepzandme.tumblr.com/tagged/gi-joe-verse)  
> A/N: Thanks to the readers who pointed out the link was broken, fixed now!
> 
> If this story touched your heart, please consider donating to the Prevent Child Abuse America charity [here.](https://preventchildabuse.org/donation/)
> 
> The line, "You have the weirdest recruitment interviews ever." is my respectful nod to scifigrl47's amazing "Phil Coulson is not a SHIELD recruiter". If you haven't read scifigrl47, what are you doing on my page? Go read her work!
> 
> "bonito" means "beautiful" in Spanish  
> "lo seinto" means "I am sorry"
> 
> Reviews are loved. I would love to hear what you think.  
> This is my tumblr: http://kepzandme.tumblr.com/ - Ask me anything.


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